1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multi-use lancet device structured to safely and effectively allow a user to employ a single device, repeated times, each time providing and preserving the sterility required, but in a manner which does not require the user to manipulate and remove a used lancet and reload a new lancet into the device each time a new use is required. The device as such provides for only a single use of each individual lancet, while providing a plurality of sterile lancets for safe and effective use by a patient or medical practitioner.
2. Description of the Related Art
Lancet devices are commonly utilized devices which allow patients and medical practitioners to "prick" a patient's skin in order to effectively obtain a blood sample for a variety of tests. Typically these lancet devices involve the driving of a lancet tip into the patient's skin so as to result in bleeding by the patient, thereby allowing the sample to be gathered. Moreover, although these tests are often performed in a hospital or laboratory environment, because of the prevalence of many home testing kits, more and more individual patients are turning to self testing, and as a result, independently utilize the lancet device so as to obtain their own blood sample.
Conventional lancet devices available in the art typically range from single use, disposable lancets, to re-useable lancet devices wherein an individual lancet can be removed and replaced after each use. As to the disposable lancets, they are generally effective to ensure that individual users do not reuse a previously contaminated lancet, and provide a certain cost effective degree of effective use. Naturally, however, when a patient or practitioner must repeatedly take blood samples, it can become quite costly and indeed quite cumbersome to have a large number of the individual disposable devices available. To this end, reusable lancet devices are becoming increasingly popular.
In the reusable lancet devices, small lancets having protruding piercing tips are typically provided in bulk for removal and replacement into the lancet device itself. For example, most lancet devices include a housing which is opened so as to allow the user to remove a contaminated and/or used lancet. During such removal, the user must take great care to ensure that he/she does not inadvertently prick themselves with the contaminated lancet tip, and indeed, there are a variety of inventions in the field of art relating to the reusable lancet devices which specifically address the concerns associated with the safe removal and disposal of used lancets. Once the used lancet has been removed and paced in an appropriate sharps box, however, a new, sterile lancet must necessarily be introduced into the device, also in a safe fashion, and the device reassembled and cocked for the subsequent use. While such reusable lancet devices provide users with certain economic benefits, there is still a concern that removal and replacement of the individual lancets within the reusable lancet device is a generally hazardous practice that could often lead to inadvertent lacerations and contamination. Furthermore, the general inconvenience of having a large plurality of loose lancets available for repeated reloading can often be cumbersome and/or inconvenient, with the new sterile lancets not always being maintained with the reusable lancet device itself.
As a result, it would be beneficial to provide a lancet device which not only can be effectively utilized so as to prick a patient's skin and achieve blood sampling, but which also further increases the safe and efficient use of the device by eliminating the need for a user to remove each used lancet prior to reusing the device. Furthermore, such a device should preferably still maintain a substantial degree of safety by ensuring that a used lancet tip cannot inadvertently be reused, but should also provide a substantially great degree of convenience, allowing repeated and continuous use of the device to be achieved in an effective manner. Moreover, such a device should be effectively configured to allow facilitated reuse, however, only after a number of safe, sterile uses have already been achieved.